Monday, November 28, 2011

About a month ago I managed to take a trip to New York to visit my brother. The trip turned out to be a fantastic experience on many levels. I feel that I got a good sense of Manhattan and Bloomberg's New York, but not much else. In the future I hope to visit Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. As for New Jersey, well, I'm still upset about Bon Jovi. Same reason for me not visiting Canada because of Celine Dion.

Jokes of course.

I will be updating this as I find more interesting things to put up, for now I will start with a link to my youtube post of the Avatar Machine.

Marc Owens has created an "Avatar Machine" that I saw in New York at MoMA on October. 2011.

There
is a headset that has a camera on a pole extended backwards by about
three feet. The headset is connected to goggles with screens that show
the person wearing the apparatus from a third person perspective. It was
noted that when people put on the Avatar Machine they would imitate
video game movements, such as exaggerating their arm movements or taking
massive steps.

Besides enjoying MoMA I also toured the Occupy Wall Street setup at Zucotti park shortly before it was dismantled. A setup;

The city is about to get its first blizzard of the winter season. Police, in an attempt to remove occupiers, surprise the make shift village by taking away their generators. The blizzard hits - temperatures fall to the upper 20's as a sleet/snow/ice mixture beats down on the city for almost 20 hours. As the city is being cleaned and the sun finally exposes itself on the crests of clouds, I venture in to interview some of the people occupying and around the facility for a article I am working on.

Within moments you could feel the hostility. One man I interviewed, named Keegan, peddled away on a bicycle that supplied power to the tent. He had groups of people taking turns. As they took turns, a police officer approached claiming that the bicycle generator system was to close to the sidewalk. Keep in mind this sidewalk is sectioned off with iron gates and surrounded at all angles with row after row of police vehicles.

I didn't see a hippie drum circle, but I did find some regular drum circles, kicking some serious beats, well away from the occupy movement.

By far one of the most alienating experiences was visiting Time's Square. The most nonsensical thing I noticed about it was a row of stairs leading upward to...nothing. They were lit in neon red, flashing and tourists fought for a spot on this two story staircase to nowhere. I asked my brother what they were doing and he replied with "worshiping their god." I laughed, but also felt scared. Nearby a ticker on the ankle of a skyscraper read "the consumer remains resilient".

Sometimes it's amazing how things can appear based on perspective. Through all this, I found the footage I took of the occupy rally in Milwaukee to be the most awe inducing. Perhaps I am biased in some way, I have not quite figured out why I feel like this. Or perhaps I am not made to be a director? Either way, the reveal;

I don't like to end with anything to heavy or downsy in the blog format, so here is something I saw by Yoko Ono that made me smile: